AN environmental warden who was in June this year freed of murder charges after the Crown’s case against him collapsed, due to inconsistencies in the testimony of the sole witness, has filed a claim in the Supreme Court seeking compensation for false imprisonment and malicious prosecution.

Nicholas Gordon, 31, who was an employee of Jamaica Social Investment Fund, has named Corporal Ozel Stewart, who is assigned to Denham Town Police Station, and the Attorney General of Jamaica as the defendants in the lawsuit.

Gordon was arrested and charged with murder in relation to the 2016 killing of Michael Britton o/c Stay Alive, o/c Bling Bigs, after the sole Crown witness claimed that Britton made a dying declaration naming Gordon as the shooter while she transported him in a taxi to Kingston Public Hospital.

However Gordon’s attorney, Anthony Williams, had asserted during the trial that the statement by the witness implicating his client “as the alleged assailant was false, misleading, deceitful, untruthful and dishonest”.

“Such purported dying declaration was never made at all by the deceased as stated in her first witness statement… which she gave to the Denham Town Police Station the said day Michael Britton died at the Kingston Public Hospital,” the attorney said in the particulars of the claim.

Furthermore, he contended that Corporal Stewart, “acted, or purported to act in the execution of his duties, unlawfully, maliciously and/or without reasonable and/or probable cause proffered and/or caused the claimant to be unlawfully imprisoned at the May Pen Police Station in the parish of Clarendon, then transferred him to the Darling Street Police Station in the parish of Kingston, and thereafter to the Central Police Station and Half-Way-Tree lock up in the parish of Saint Andrew for an unreasonably long time before being brought to court”.

Williams said further that the corporal “acted, or purporting to act in execution of his duties, unlawfully, maliciously and/or without reasonable and/or probable cause, prosecuted the claimant by proffering charges against the claimant, namely murder and illegal possession of firearm (the criminal charges)”.

Those criminal charges were, however, dismissed in favour of Gordon in June this year after a no-case submission by Williams was upheld by Supreme Court judge, Justice Leighton Pusey.

Gordon, who had been taken into custody by the police in 2019, has argued in the claim that the false imprisonment and malicious prosecution by the defendants have caused him, “serious loss, damage, humiliation, injury to his reputation, character and integrity, and put him to considerable expense and embarrassment”.

As a consequence he is seeking special damages of $4.88 million, damages for false imprisonment, damages for malicious prosecution, aggravated damages for false imprisonment and malicious prosecution, exemplary damages for false imprisonment and malicious prosecution, vindicatory damages, plus interest, as well as costs for his legal fees.